Women Chasing Men and Dressing for What's Important

A few years ago, Gay Talese, one of the pioneers of literary or “new” journalism, gave an interview to the then online presence of GQ and Details, Men.Style.com:


Two points in Talese's discussion bear attention.

First is his account of the Italian passeggiata in his parents' village:

At night, the men of the town would parade around the fountain….It was a fashion show unreported, uncovered, unphotographed...a tradition of men walking around and the women looking at them -– and maybe picking a man they would like to know. And then they’d tell the brother, the father, and something was arranged.

The role-reversal here is striking. Although the idea of the peacock is nothing new, we in the U.S. at least tend to think of romance as happening along the opposite lines: Women dress up and men (wearing just about anything, really) chase them.

We probably think this way because of the movies we watch, but the funny thing is, regardless of who chases, women ultimately do the choosing, right? The actuality of the American situation is not, therefore, all that different from what's described here. The passeggiata custom is just more honest about it than the typical Hollywood narrative. So why not change our perspective?

In my view, men should focus their energy on refining themselves -- dressing up their characters as well as their bodies, everyday, indoors and out -- and see who shows up to choose them. Likely, men who go this route will have far more options than they would chasing individual woman after individual woman until one said "yes." The irony, in other words, is that with this approach, men actually do more choosing than they do with the current method.

The second point that bears attention is Talese's assertion that he "always dressed up for the story," meaning, his work as a journalist itself merited the respect inherent to dressing up, regardless of the company he kept:

It wasn't who I was with....no matter who I'm talking to, I'm dressing up, not for the people but for the story. It's ceremonious, it's celebratory, it's important.

A friend of mine and I used to dress up for exams in grad school and our reasons were the same as Talese's. Imagine, though, if we as a society dressed up for everything we thought was important and refused to do unimportant things. What would the world -- and our lives -- be like?

The Gentleman Formula (Aphorism No. 3)

If you dress like a gentleman, you'll feel like a gentleman. If you feel like a gentleman, you'll act like a gentleman. If you act like a gentleman, you'll be a gentleman.

Previous aphorisms: Dressing for Existence (no.1), Art (no. 2)

Joseph Abboud on Happiness and Why American Men Don't Dress Well

The April 2011 issue of MR (Menswear Retailing) magazine features an interview with Joseph Abboud, President and CCO of HMX and its flagship brand Hart Schaffner Marx.

For those who aren't in the know, here's a fast crash course: Abboud is a great, classic-but-not-stuffy (if you know what I mean) designer of American men's apparel. He's worked for a few different companies, including Ralph Lauren, but he's most famous for his eponymous label, Joseph Abboud. A few years ago, he decided to sell this line (and its company, JA Apparel) because he was spending more time administrating than designing and he wanted to get back to the more creative aspect of the trade. Trouble ensued, however, when he founded a new label, Jaz (get it...Joseph abboud z), and JA Apparel successfully sued him for violating his non-competition clause. After spending two years in litigation and losing Jaz, Abboud went to work for HMX, who hired him as their chief designer with more or less carte blanche authority.

In the interview, Abboud talks about his legal battle as well as a number of other subjects, but two points in particular caught my attention, his comments about the American male's lack of sartorial awareness and his views on happiness. Regarding the former, he says:

My goal is for more men to embrace fashion and style rather than be afraid of it. As an industry, we've done a terrible job of conveying an appreciation for fine clothing. The Europeans grow up with it; it's in their pasta. Here, we turn guys off with ridiculous runway presentations so they think fashion is totally frivolous. If you're a major New York newspaper, don't show a guy on a runway on a horse with war paint and expect that your reader is going to understand your message. Talk to guys in a language they can understand.

So, part of the reason American men don't dress well is that the fashion industry makes the whole enterprise seem ridiculous.

Then, regarding happiness, he says:

I'm not much of a socializer: I don't have lots of friends, I don't go to many events or parties beyond what I have to do. My real happiness is my work and family. In fact, I had a great evening last night teaching my daughter Ari some tricks for memorizing the American presidents...

Last summer, my older daughter Lila interned at HMX. One of her jobs was to straighten out these boxes of old swatches and she came to me with this mushroom-colored Donegal piece of sweater that she thought I might like. It was so gorgeous that I built an entire collection around it; it was one of our deliveries for fall 2010. And the next time she was at our offices and saw that collection, she was beaming; she was like, "Daddy, I discovered that swatch!" Now that to me is happiness.

Work and family equals happiness. What can I say? The guy has his priorities straight.

Be Nice and Clean

Recently, my girlfriend and I decided to go to NYC with no plan, thinking we'd figure out what to do when we got there. (We live in Connecticut so this isn't too radical.) Among other things, we ended up roaming around the upper east side, where we stumbled upon a couple gems.

The first one was Tender Buttons, a very vintagey closet of a place that sells fasteners of all sorts, from classical and custom to novel. I was drooling. My girlfriend was drooling for me. It was closed.

Then, just two doors down on 62nd street, we bumped into an equally manly operation: The Art of Shaving. Now, I've since learned that this is a multi-city chain with locations all over NYC that I never even noticed and that they have ads in GQ, Esquire, and so on. At the time, however, all I had to go on was the experience I was having and it was fantastic.

The 62nd Street store is small, about the size of an efficiency apartment. It has an affable manager, Angelo Ramirez, whose inexhaustible knowledge and obvious shaving prowess makes you want to take out a straight razor and shave like your grandfather.

After several weeks of mulling it over, I finally decided to pony up for a starter kit and I'm happy to report that I'm really into it. I love the ritual, the different steps in the process, the pre-shave oil and the after-shave balm. I love the way shaving like this slows down and elongates the part of my day devoted to taking care of myself.

This got me thinking. Women spend all kinds of time on their hair, their make-up, their clothes, their everything. Why do we men cheat ourselves out of the few things we used to take this seriously? It's not as if we give up virility by lathering up with a shaving brush or making our beards look regal. If anything, men were manlier in the days when they did these things as a matter of course. And we can't blame being "too busy" because most women are just as busy as we are and they don't stop doing their hair. So what gives? Why don't we do this very cool, multiple-step shaving ritual thing anymore?

Hey, Comb It Like Dapper Dan!

In another June 2011 piece, Menswear magazine hails the coming of a new old hairstyle: the slicked back look. Crediting Mad Men's Don Draper for the advent of the recent trend, the article names several prominent offenders: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and George Clooney. The following pictures should do for reference:

Some of these guys have been wearing their hair slicked back on and off, in the movies and out, for years so attributing the resurgence of the look to Mad Men might be overstating the case a bit, but the hairstyle does seem fairly prominent on red carpets these days. Some other personalities famous for sporting the do at one point or another: Zac Efron, Johnny Depp, and Alec Baldwin. But if all this feels just a little too close to Gordon Gekko, the upside is that if the style does take off outside celebrity land, at least we'll be able to wear hats again without looking like we just got out of bed.

Fashion Care Symbols

Ever been stymied by those perplexing care symbols on garment tags? Well, the American Cleaning Institute, formerly known as the Soap and Detergent Association, comes to the rescue:



Another helpful guide is available from the American Society for Testing and Materials, via the Missouri Textile and Apparel Center.

Work Clothes Update

I recently saw Tree of Life. I think it's a very important and beautiful film and, at some point, I might say something about it here. For now, however, I simply want to point out that the Brad Pitt character works in the yard and on his car in nice clothes and great shoes.

While these garments appear to be ones from his normal wardrobe rather than ones he specifically designated for gritty tasks, his sartorial practice here nevertheless functions as a case in point for the work clothes discussion on this blog (see here).

This got me curious: Was it common for men in the fifties to refrain from changing for yard and car work (like the Pitt character), did they change into high quality but slightly blemished attire (like I advocated), or did they do something else entirely? Does anybody know?

A-Shirts Underneath: What's the Point?

Here's something that's always puzzled me: Why do men wear those ribbed tanks (technically called "A-shirts" but commonly known as "wife-beaters") under nice -- I mean well-made, expensive -- shirts?

If you don't like undershirts at all, that I can understand; in fact, on one level, it's immanently sensible to avoid wearing an undershirt if you prefer fine garments because it allows you to feel the exquisite material against your body all day.

But the reason the rest of us put on an undershirt -- that is, a tee -- with such clothing in particular is that we want to prevent our underarm perspiration from rendering it impossibly rank (you can get several days' use per washing with an under-tee) and, worse, ruining it with permanent discoloration. An A-shirt may keep the torso in general dry, but it doesn't address the majority of the problem, namely, pit sweat.

So why wear one, at least when the clothes are nice? Why not wear a tee to save the shirt or nothing at all to feel the fabric? Is it because A-shirts hug the body, making it feel sleek and taut? Then why not use them for other purposes, like pajamas? (This is what I do.) Or is it because it feels cool to look like a rapper (since most guys who wear these things for undershirts unfasten a button or two to let everyone see what they've got underneath)? Really, I could use a hand with this one.

Work Clothes

I really like wearing ties. This is not a secret; I've said it here. I love the way they look, I love what they stand for, I love the way the stiff material guides my neck into proper posture.

My problem, however, is that the place I work gets me very grungy and thus necessitates wearing "work clothes" -- and here I don't primarily mean the apparel one wears on the job (at some point, I hope to do a post about "work clothes" in this more narrowly-defined sense as well) but, more generally, the apparel one wears for any endeavor bound to sully up raiment: changing the oil in the car, mowing the lawn, and so forth.

Since my job obliges wearing this type of clothing, I've been spending a lot of my existence in uninspiring attire. And while part of me would love to change into nicer clothes when I get home from my job, the other part militates against putting on a shirt and tie for dinner, etc., only to take them right off again to go bed.

What to do? Well, recently, I decided to incorporate a tie into my work clothes outfit. This would allow me the joy of daily wearing ties without having to change into them for that express purpose. I selected a few ties that are high enough in quality to be appealing yet are mildly deficient in some way that disqualifies them from my normal tie rotation: e.g., they're a bit too long or short, perhaps lightly stained, and neither decorative nor versatile.

Of course, wearing a tie requires a somewhat nicer shirt, which might call for better pants. Since I have some pretty good bleach-splashed or red soda-speckled shirts and trousers, I went for the full work clothes makeover.

Wearing this new garb got me thinking. Why do we throw away nice but stained clothes while hanging on to cheap, baggy jeans and freebee tees to wear for yard work? We wouldn't be caught dead in this stuff under normal circumstances, but somehow it's good enough when we're working? Wouldn't we rather wear that shirt that makes us feel like a million bucks when it invariably has something go wrong with it? I understand we might not want to wear hot, constricting clothes for strenuous activity, but a lot of nice clothes are not hot or constricting (hey, yank that tie down a little!) and a lot of work is not strenuous. In these cases, wouldn't the work be more enjoyable if we conducted it in an outfit we liked?

Fashion and Posture

In her fascinating study on human posture, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, Esther Gokhale reports that debilitating back pain is a distinctively Western, post-nineteenth century problem for which the fashion industry is partly to blame (see pages 10-15 in particular). Elaborating on this charge, she notes that, around the time of World War I, French fashion magazines began to feature models with a supposedly more relaxed and casual but quite unhealthy posture. The idea was that the previous, more upright and therefore more natural and healthy, stance was stiff, rigid, and passé. Today, she says, clothes are made to fit the newer, more unnatural positions, which we have long since habituated.

According to Gokhale, if we abandoned this bad posture in favor of that which prevailed in Western culture prior to the twentieth century and still prevails in indigenous populations, we would experience a number of positive changes: less or no back pain as well as relief in muscles and joints all over the body; more energy, stamina, and flexibility; less stress.

This raises a host of questions in my mind. First, if clothing manufacturers alter the way they cut fabric so it will lay correctly on people adopting a new, unhealthy posture, doesn't this mean it will no longer sit well on someone striving for the older, more salutary stance? In other words, when clothes change in this way, don't they start encouraging the bad posture rather than merely accommodating it?

Second, I want to know which types of clothing do this. Is it just the ones we immediately think of as casual (jeans, t-shirts, etc.)? Is it not these at all but other types of garments? Or is it all clothes, including suits and dress shirts? After all, even dress clothes have been modified for comfort over the years and this "comfort" would have to be defined by what has been comfortable according to the reigning (in this case, unhealthy) posture.

This whole topic is really just a side issue in Ms. Gokhale's larger discussion so she doesn't fully address these concerns and I'm having trouble finding other sources on the matter. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Is Your Wardrobe as Green as You Are?

George Carlin famously pointed out that we love hording stuff and buying bigger and bigger houses to put it in. This is only partly true, however. The other half of the story is that when we don't want or can't afford a bigger house, we streamline, throwing a bunch of stuff away to make room for more. Throwing stuff out is thus as much a part of consumerism as buying stuff (see here, for example, or here for a fun cartoon).

The problem with this is that it makes landfills bigger. Throwing things away is not really getting rid of them; it's making someone else deal with them instead. While recycling can be a good way of getting around this problem, the things we think we've "recycled" often end up with a very different fate from what we have in mind, being more or less trashed (see this other cartoon).

So what does all this have to do with the subjects we talk about here? Well, most of us who like clothes -- me, many readers of this blog -- buy a lot of them and we don't always, or even usually, wear out what we buy. Taking them to thrift shops can be good, but if the reason we don't want them is that they are ripped, impossibly stained, or newly out of style, no one else is going to want them either and the only thing we'll have accomplished is having the thrift shop throw them out instead of us. So it doesn't solve the problem.

Perhaps we could come up with a solution, though. My own suggestions toward this are the following:

1. We could keep our buying to a minimum, attempting to wear the clothes we have, and, when buying, buy wisely. This is a tough one. After all, shopping is fun, right? We're being trained to view buying things as a hobby, a social activity, a therapy, and much more, but we can resist this. In pursuing a more environmentally responsible wardrobe, we can seek out garments that are made well and won't fall apart (like most clothes are designed to do). This will probably mean spending a little more money upfront, but I think it's worth it. We could also stay away from clothes that only go with a few others others or are strictly in style and thus likely to be deemed passé by fashion spin doctors in a year or two.

2. We could vastly reduce the amount of clothes we throw away by being more reflective about the issue, beginning by asking why we are discarding a given item in the first place. Is it because it's stained? We could relegate it to work clothes (as I argue here). Is it because it has a rip in it? We could stitch it. (If I can do it, anyone can.) Or, if it's a really hard repair, why not have it tailored, which would also benefit local artisans? Or maybe we're getting rid of the piece because we've been unsuccessful in keeping our eighteen-year-old waistline. In that case, we could think of someone who would love to wear the garment. If no one fits the bill, a couple options remain. If it's a shirt or pair of trousers, we could cut it into rags to shine our shoes, work on our car, or clean our house. This does, of course, amount to throwing the garment away eventually, but it happens a use or two later and, in the latter case, replaces the paper towel waste that would be there anyway. Alternatively, if it's a blazer, tie, or hat, we could take it to a thrift shop.

These are just ideas to get us started. I'm open to others. The main point is simply that when we buy clothes, we should think of them as ours and not be so quick to throw them away, or so quick to buy them in the first place, thinking we can just discard them later. If we're going to be putting these things on our bodies, don't we want them to be so much what we're looking for that they're worth keeping, repairing, using, loving?

What Do Women Pay For?

Sometimes, my girlfriend and I go clothes shopping together. We actually happen to be in the rare and lucky position of mutually enjoying this process, regardless of who's doing the trying on.

I've noticed something interesting, even puzzling, on these trips, however: The cost of a garment often has less to do with its quality in women's apparel than it does in men's.

Now, this doesn't apply so much when it comes to lower-end stores. At the mall, Target, etc. -- even Macy's -- most of the clothes, regardless of gender, are not very high in quality. They look cool, but they're going to fall apart in a couple years, tops, which most people don't mind because everything will be out of style by then anyway. In a lot of these lower-end establishments, the women's clothes are even absurdly cheap: five, ten, twelve, twenty dollars. This, I think, is closer to what the clothes are actually worth than what men are paying in similar stores. Presumably, the rationale here is that women need lots of clothes so each garment should cost as little as possible. And, of course, you get what you pay for: The clothes in such venues are shabby for both genders, even though you pay a little less for this shabbiness in the women's case.

But in the higher-end places, the situation is more interesting. When I go to a men's boutique -- at least one where they actually sell suits and ties, etc. -- what I'm paying for is the quality and expertise. The material feels great and lasts forever (ten to twenty years at least) and a guy comes up to me who can tell me all my sizes without a tape measure and point me to everything in the store that looks like I was born to wear it. When I take my girlfriend to a women's boutique, however, the clothes feel the same as the ones at the mall even though the tags are in the triple digits (Ann Taylor and maybe Talbots constitute exceptions, though these aren't technically boutiques). The expertise isn't usually there either: There's normally a young, heavily accessorized salesgirl who sits in a chair, popping her bubblegum while we look through the racks.

What gives? What is the rationale for spending so much in these types of stores? If it's just a desire to look like a model, can't women satisfy this demand at the places charging twelve dollars a garment? Do many women just enjoy the experience of buying expensive things? Or am I missing something? Anyone should feel free to weigh in, but comments from women are especially welcome.

Dressing for Existence

I've been monkeying around with a reformulation of the classic adage "Dress for the job you want, not the job you have." I think it should be: "Dress for the existence you want, not the existence you have," but I'm also considering "Dress for the existence you're creating, not the existence you were given." What do people think?

Philosophers' Clothes: Nietzsche II

In another excerpt from his bio, R.J. Hollingdale reports that:

[Nietzsche's] appearance during the ten years he was in Basel excited comment because of his excessive attention to dress, amounting almost to dandyism...he was, apart from an old state counsellor from Baden, the only man in Basel to wear a grey topper. [p. 49]

Interestingly, Hollingdale also quotes one of Nietzsche's students who noticed his snazzy duds but nevertheless observed that "his whole personality expressed nothing less than indifference to whatever external impression he might be making."

So, was Nietzsche a pretty boy or was he uninterested in looking good for others? The answer, it turns out, might be both. Hollingdale says that even though Nietzsche was always decked out to the nines, "by 1875 dressing well was probably a habit rather than a conscious effort."

This sounds right to me and I think it's both interesting and important. When one begins to formulate a philosophical approach to attire (something I'm convinced Nietzsche had), obsession with clothes is, I think, inevitable. This has certainly been the case for me. Not long ago, I thought, "I really don't want to be thinking about clothes this much."

Now, however, I can feel the obsession fading because there's not much to think about anymore. I've already figured out which types of clothing help me become who I want to be and which ones just encourage vanity or sloppiness. Furthermore, people in my life have gotten used to the way I dress and no longer need it explained to them. And the philosophical constraints that spawned my style in the first place don't afford much room for reinventing it. The details are also becoming second nature: Matching parts is getting easier and, at this point, I pick the day's tie and knot without much deliberation and usually have it around my neck in under a minute, no mirror.

So while it's true that being philosophical about clothes involves some initial fixation on fashion, it subsides as the sartorial philosophy takes shape. For those who aren't happy "just wearing whatever," I find this temporary obsession a welcome alternative to the mania that goes with searching for flashy or entertaining clothes, which never ends because the entertainment a garment provides evaporates at the same rate as its novelty.

Previous Philosophers' Clothes posts: Nietzsche

Philosophers' Clothes: Nietzsche

Here is the first in a series of posts I'll be doing on philosophers and clothing, devoted either to a story about a given philosopher's sartorial tendencies or to a comment one of them made about attire or fashion. Here then is a biographical vignette from Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy, by the well-known Nietzsche biographer and scholar, R.J. Hollingdale. It recounts the philosopher's preparation as he anticipates meeting Wagner for the first time (on November 8th, 1868):

Thinking there would be a large gathering, Nietzsche visited his tailor, who, as it happened, had promised to have an evening suit for him that very day. The suit was not quite ready, and he was promised it in three-quarters of an hour; when he went back, it was still not ready, and it was at last presented to him at half past six. With it came a bill, which the tailor's assistant demanded should be met before he would part with the suit. Nietzsche hadn't enough money on him - or in his possession very likely - and tried to put the suit on (he had taken his own off to try the new one on for size); a struggle ensued in which the tailor proved the victor; he disappeared, taking the suit with him, and Nietzsche stormed out into the pouring rain, fearful that by now he would be late for his appointment and hoping his old clothes would do. As it turned out, there was no large gathering: just the Brockhaus family, Nietzsche and Windisch, and Wagner. [pg. 40]

Hollingdale goes on to say that the evening went very well. Wagner played the piano and he and Nietzsche had a long discussion about Schopenhauer. Then, at the end of the visit, Wagner invited him back for more music and philosophy. The moral of the story (for our purposes, anyway): Take your costume seriously, but not too seriously.

Cornel West Talks Clothes with Prepidemic

Last spring, public intellectual Cornel West, did a few short interviews on clothing and style with Prepidemic Magazine. These are the more interesting among them.

In this first piece, Prepidemic asks him for his definition of style. He says this "has to do with the ways in which you are able to orient your critical intelligence, your spirituality, and your sense of character," or, more succinctly, "it's how you move through space and time." Even more interesting, however, is his claim that style cannot be without substance. In other words, the expression "all style and no substance" is a contradiction in terms if, by the former, one means "genuine style," which entails substance. This is not easily obtained, however. To have substance and thus style, he says you have to come to terms with who you are, which involves examining "the dark corners of your own soul....you find your voice, then you've got your style."


The following piece reifies the previous one's notion of style in the example of fashion. Here, Mr. West makes a very explicit link between how he sees himself and the world on the one hand and what he wears on the other. His attire actualizes his philosophy.


Getting still more specific, yet less philosophical, Mr. West discusses some of the features of his particular "uniform."

Brooks Brothers

One of the things this blog seeks to do is gather relevant information from other places -- magazines, books, websites, etc. -- and talk about it here. For example, this month's Menswear (April 2011) has a write-up on the current owner of Brooks Brothers, Claudio Del Vecchio.

A central argument of the piece is that crusty old dinosaurs shouldn't give Del Vecchio flack for some of the more daring garments in Brooks' new, so-called "Black Fleece" line. (By means of a link that probably won't be operational for all that long, the current men's offerings can be seen here.)

Brooks Brothers was always an envelope-pusher, the argument goes, and so our affinity for it as the conservative guardian of traditional American style is misplaced. We must therefore allow, even expect, it to continue its own tradition of setting the standard by forging ahead of the status quo. The article offers some examples of its track record in this regard:

Brooks is the source of many men's wear innovations now taken for granted. It introduced the seersucker in 1830; the first ready-made suit in 1845; the button-down collar in 1896; the repp tie in 1920; and argyle socks, in 1949. [p. 32, see here for definitions.]

Now, don't get me wrong; this is an impressive list and I'm not opposed to the Black Fleece line anyway. In fact, I even like some of it. But those who feel differently are probably not objecting to the changes simply because they don't like innovation, full stop; rather, I suspect they like the clothes they've been buying for fifty years and don't want to see them disappear. Regardless of whether Brooks came to their style by innovation or by following the crowd, these men like that style and aren't keen to see it go. Fear not, the article says; some things are just too classic to trash. I don't therefore think the Black Fleece is going to push out the more traditional fare; I'm simply pointing out that the argument bolstering this new endeavor isn't the sharpest. If the reasoning is: "Brooks always innovated, why not now?" an easy response is: "Because, before, innovating led to a more useful, high-quality, and thus popular product, whereas now it's leading to flashy, impractical couture for runway models."

Some other interesting tidbits from the article:

1) Brooks Brothers' mission statement, something it's not changing, is "To make and deal only in merchandise of the finest quality, to sell it at a fair profit and to deal with people who seek and appreciate such merchandise." This is a great mission statement.

2) Brooks made the coat Abraham Lincoln wore the night he was shot. Talk about classic.

3) Del Vecchio collaborated on the wardrobe for Mad Men with Janie Bryant, the show's costume designer.

Attire and Behavior

This blog operates on the presupposition that the way we dress and the way we act are related. For example, people who dress casually tend to behave casually and people who dress formally tend to behave formally.

It could be that attire is, in part, responsible for behavior. Or it could be that people who are already disposed toward a particular style of behavior choose a corresponding style of attire. A still further possibility is that some third factor impels individuals toward a mutually supportive attire and behavior. The point for the time being is not to decide this question. In all likelihood, it will vary from case to case and, in some instances, no correlation whatsoever will be had.

Still, there seems to be some connection between what we put on and how we act. This blog, then, among other things, will concern itself with fashion not so much as an avenue of self-expression or as an art form, but as a vehicle for facilitating open, respectful, and authentic relations with other people.